Ugly House Photos

Real Estate Statistics - June 22, 2009 update:

Bank-Owned Active Listings: There are only 4,565 active bank-owned foreclosure listings in all of the Phoenix metro area, down 136 from last week.  As new foreclosure listings hit the market, an equal amount or more is being bought.  There is less than a one-month’s supply of foreclosure listings now in the Phoenix metro area.

Pending sales (properties currently under contract):
Currently, there are 13,446 pending sales in the Phoenix metro area plus an additional 5,419 contingency sales (shaky contracts).  Pending sales reached a high for the year on Friday May 15th at 14,374, which is the highest number of currently pending sales ever on record.  When you add the contingency contracts to the pending contracts, we had 19,222 properties under contract at one time on Friday, June 19th, the highest amount on record!  The total number of properties under contract today is 18,865.

Inventory continues to decline.  There are currently 32,907 active listings in MLS as of June 22, 2009, down 500 from last week.  For comparison, the highest number of active listings in 2009 was 52,685 on January 14th.  That’s over 37 percent drop in inventory in 5 months!  Over 19,770 fewer properties in 5 months.  This has resulted in multiple offers for lower priced listings.  We are in a seller’s market in the under-$250,000 price range.

The following graph really shows how the Phoenix area real estate market has changed in the past four years.  Mike Orr of the Cromford Report analyzed the data of pending contracts and calculated an index of market activity.  You can see that we are now in a seller’s market.  Mike’s chart was updated June 1st.  I have added a new calculation based on June 19th data; it shows the contract index at 58!   [click to enlarge]

Sales:
The number of contingency sales (shaky contracts) continues to climb and climb (currently 5,419, up from only 700 in early January and up 169 since last week), but they have not converted to actual sales.  Most of these contingency sales are short sale listings where buyers put in offers and then wait and wait and wait for the banks to decide yes or no.  It’s so bad that on Friday, June 19th, only 0.66% of the contingency contracts actually sold, whereas 2.44% of the pending contracts actually sold.

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Let’s look at Phoenix, Arizona specifically.

For the city of Phoenix only, as of June 22, 2009.  Numbers are based on the orange 90-day lines. However, check out the black lines (7-day trends).  The Phoenix real estate market has shifted to a seller’s market.

Median sales price for Phoenix properties: $183,331 (down $154 in the past week).  This decline marked the first drop in the past twelve weeks.

Inventory of properties for sale in Phoenix: 7,205 (down 197 in the last week).  The 7-day trend shows even more drastic drop-off in inventory, down 39% in the past 6 months.

Median price per square foot for Phoenix properties: $106/sqft, up $1/sqft in the last week for an increase in 8 of the past 9 weeks.

Average days on market for Phoenix properties: The average number of days on market refers to active listings, not sold properties.  Active listings are averaging 185 days on the market.